Oconee River Milledgeville

I don't have a definite plan yet, but the river is down despite all the rain we've been getting and I'm going to hit it this weekend. They have stopped releasing and it's dropped from over 12' yesterday to just under 8' tonight. I'm thinking they are going to leave it alone for the weekend unless some heavy rains fall north of here.

If anyone is interested in going let me know and we'll come up with a game plan.

Looks like they just released a lot of water again. Up over a foot in the last hour and discharge is increasing.

Same way here,generation around the clock......im tired of all this rain,hoping for a dry fall

I have been saving my vacation days for a couple of long weekend camping/kayak trips so things better get better soon.

We finally got to spend some time out there today. We got a late start and were on the water from noon until 7. Shannon caught a few including an Altamaha Bass and lost one LM that had to be over 4 pounds right at her kayak. Her paddle got in her way and cost her that one.
I caught two nice Altamahas, 4 largemouth, and one bream. Two of my LM were short fish. The one bream was maybe 3" long and it hit a 2.5" squarebill. My biggest bass today was 22.5" long and I'd guess was about 5 1/2 pounds. It hit a chartreuse pepper zoom lizard, was hooked well, and put up a good drag stripping fight. After I measured it I was trying to weigh it and it managed to flop loose and away it went. Oh well, I was going to let her go anyway.

The river was super clear today. We probably had 15 gar bite, but couldn't get one hooked up. We saw 3 bowfin, but couldn't get any of them to bite or even follow which is very unusual. One of them was pretty big. I saw several big channel cats, a few big schools of mullet, and some pretty big carp.
We both had tons of bites from small bass that seemed just too little for the hooks we were using. There were a lot of schools of 6" to 10" bass with the occasional larger one mixed in. We lost the tails of many lizards and worms today. We could have switch to smaller gear, but still had fun watching them follow and nibble all the way to the kayaks. Often we could get a school to follow us for a good ways down river. Sometimes they would just hang out right up under our kayaks while we floated.

I was hoping to use the Helix 5 G2/GPS/2D Chirp Sonar/DI today. (Walmart has them on clearance for $186 in case any of you missed the thread in the freshwater section.) I've never used a fish finder on the river and there are some holes I'm very curious about the depth of and structure. Unfortunately a blown fuse kept it from working. I'll make sure to keep some spares from now on.

They released water again right after we left and it's on the way down again now. Lately they are raising it every evening.

Out of all the people we talked to that were fishing today no one was doing great. One family (I think there were 6 or 7 of them) also in kayaks came by and the father told me they had caught about 10 small bass. I thought to myself "Shannon and I are doing pretty good today" and then he went on to tell me that they only had ONE pole and had been sharing it all day. So it sounds like all of them that took a turn knew what they were doing. LOL

We wanted to go yesterday things just didnt work out

Same here.....I was planning on heading back out with a friend, but he got delayed. I figured the water would be heading back up in the evening so we went to Sinclair in his boat instead. Turns out they didn't let water out and the river's lower right now than in awhile. I got 2 bites on Sinclair. He had more, but neither of us caught anything. My kayaks are still loaded up from Saturday so I might get the chance to go for a few hours this evening. I'll be watching the gauge.

I went last night after work from 6:30 - 8:30 and stayed near the boat ramp at the Greenway. The river is way down and super clear. I couldn't find a bite anywhere except for in current/rapids. I caught 5 bass all on a squarebill. The biggest was 1.5 to 2 pounds. A couple of them were Altamaha Bass which are always a treat.

I've been seeing a lot of catfish in the river lately. Several of them being giants. I floated over one yesterday that was at least 3' long. I'd bet he was around 40 pounds. I saw a couple Saturday that were about the same size. Bunches of nice ones in the 2-3 pound range too. Also there were plenty of big carp right under the bridge.

Shannon and I went again today for awhile and only caught one bass each. Hers was a Largemouth and mine an Altamaha. I think if you'd weighed them together they still wouldn't have been 1/2 pounds of fish. LOL No great story about one that got away as we didn't get many bites today.

Learned something new. I live 10 miles from the Altamaha river. Fished it all my life and have never heard of an Altamaha Bass. Looked it up. Pretty fish.

Bream Pole said:

Learned something new. I live 10 miles from the Altamaha river. Fished it all my life and have never heard of an Altamaha Bass. Looked it up. Pretty fish.

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I'd never heard of them before coming on here. I'd caught them for years and just never realized they weren't just juvenile largemouth. There are definite differences, but I never stopped to notice other than thinking that some of the ones I caught had prettier patterns.

Have you been doing the same thing or just haven't caught them? I don't know how common they are down there. Shoal Bandit can tell you all about them. If you look up some of his posts on here there are pictures and details.

I went back Sunday with couple friends and we had a nice day. We all caught fish, but there was no size to any of them. I caught 6 bass with 4 being largemouth and 2 Altamaha Bass. The six might have weighed 2 1/2 pounds altogether. LOL

The river is as far down and as clear as I've ever seen it. I didn't see many gar and no big ones. I didn't see a single bowfin either.

Still a very fun and relaxing day. One of my friends was back home visiting from New Mexico where he's a border patrol agent. I've only seen him a few times since we were kids.